Forty-two years ago Milton Brasher-Cunningham first heard the words that rescued him, like a strong arm lifting a drowning person to safety.

He was 16 and the new missionary kid from Africa in a big Houston school, plopped into the middle of his junior year. His family came to Houston to lead a Baptist church, but details had not been finalized so Brasher-Cunningham — ordinarily an extrovert — could not connect in school with youth from that church.

He didn’t talk to a single other student outside of a classroom for two weeks, dreading every lunch hour sitting alone in a boisterous cafeteria, a stone in the river of laughter flowing around him.

Until one day he heard, “Here’s the guy I’ve been looking for.” A missionary-kid friend from Africa, whom he hadn’t seen for years, scooped up Brasher-Cunningham’s tray and set it down in the midst of others from his home church.

“That changed my whole world. Someone knew my name. I started being greeted in the halls. It changed everything.”

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2 Responses to some kind words . . .

Jane

August 13, 2014 at 11:07 am

I can’t decide if my favorite part is about “invitational theology” (“…which is “a lot more about being faithful and together than it is about being right”) or the news that there’s a second book coming in 2015! 🙂